Podcast

Did someone – a teacher, or parent, or peer – shut down your art? This happens all too often, especially when we are young. As kids, we don’t have the perspective or resiliency to know when someone is telling us something that’s not helpful for us. This drives me crazy! I work with so many people who have had to reclaim their artist. And sometimes, it’s decades before they shed the story someone else told them. Did this happen to you?

In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I talk with multi-media artist Sean McMullin. To be transparent, Sean and I are art buddies who meet regularly to talk about what we are making. We go on and on about what inspires us and what gets in the way or supports our art-making. But in this episode, the focus is on Sean. We talk about:

• Giving ourselves permission to explore and create.
• Ending a lifelong struggle with creativity.
• How Sean makes his art a central part of his days with project management skills.
• Why and when and how to share.
• Keeping good notes as a key to a successful art practice.

If you’ve ever struggled to find space for your art or to reclaim the artist that got shut down as a child, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

Sean’s Instagram account

Mark Dion

Emilie Wopnick

Barbara Sher

At the end of the year, it’s tempting to just dive into planning for the next year. But if we don’t pause to reflect on the year we had, we rob ourselves of much of the empowerment and joy we earned through our actions. For creatives especially, doing an annual review process can give us the confidence and courage to brave new things. In this solo episode, I share why it’s so important to reflect. I also share some of the major challenges I experienced, some creative wins, including one of the biggest creative projects of my life.

The lens I look back through is always focused on my creative process. What did I make? What did I learn from that? How did the books and podcasts and shows and movies and things that I consumed impact my life and my creativity. With these guiding inquiries, I’m able to not only see what I did, but I can appreciate who I became as a result of doing those things.

Doing an annual reflection process helps us digest the year, the things we did, and who we were. It allows us to honor and savor our efforts and our being. We often skip this step and end of the year feeling harried and unaccomplished, we start the new year on an empty tank.

Mentioned in this episode:  

Annual Review for Creatives workshop  

Sparketype  

Write Your Travel Stories  

Victoria Bresee, therapist  

Mindfulness Workbook for addiction: a guide for coping with the grief, stress and anger that trigger addictive behaviors by Rebecca E. Williams, PhD and Julia S. Craft MA
(also available in the Denver library)

Tim Ferris with Paul Conti: How Trauma Works and How to Heal from It  

School of Life: Why Happiness is a Useless Word  

Things that made a difference in my life this year  

Workshops 

Center for Applied Jungian Studies  

Esther Perel The Great Adaptation Conference  

Natalie Goldberg haiku workshop  

Transform Your Relationship with Food  

Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals   

Books 

Still Writing by Dani Shapiro 

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick’s

Living Color : Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing by Natalie Goldberg

Illustration Workshop : Find Your Style, Practice Drawing skills, and Build a Stellar Portfolio  by Mary Kate McDevitt 

Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg  

How to be an artist  by Jerry Saltz  

Let’s Eat France
This might be the coolest book I have ever seen. It’s for the lover of food, the francophile and the person who loves trivia and history. Feel free to treat me to this for Christmast!!  

Magazines 

Cook’s Illustrated
I got this randomly from the library. I couldn’t even get past the masthead because it was so interesting and valuable! I tore out the subscription card and handed it to Steve. “Birthday present,” I said. I LOVE this magazine and cannot believe I am only this year getting on board. 

Poets & Writers
If you are serious about the life of a writer, this is the magazine to have. In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I mentioned a special piece I have in the January/February 2022 issue. Don’t miss it!

Podcasts 

I listen to podcasts constantly, it seems. These are the ones I especially loved this year.  

Daring Greatly  

Unlocking Us 

This Jungian Life 

Art Juice  

The Splendid Table  

Other treats

A fun, unexpected treat was Mud\Wtr. My stepson Mark Davenport and I were talking about mushrooms. I have been using Lion’s Mane in my morning coffee and also taking a mushroom supplement. Mark asked if I knew about Mud/Wtr. I checked it out.

Their copywriting and marketing was so compelling, I had to order. I got their morning kit and was in love with it before I even tasted it! Then I tried it. I love the blend of spices, mushrooms and a spot of black tea. This has replaced my second cappuccino. I highly recommend this. Use this link to check it out.  

My new favorite notebook! I put images from my favorite calendar on the front of these to jazz them up a bit.  Zen Art Supplies dot grid notebook 

Affiliate links are used in this blog post.  

What’s your relationship with poetry? You may have read or written some back in school. Perhaps you think poetry is obtuse and intellectual and not for you.

I love poetry for how essential it is. Every word matters in a poem. A writer has no place to hide; their truth and emotions are right there in the sparseness of the lines. The very first writing class I taught was a poetry class. The things I learned from that class inform all the writing I do. Whatever your relationship with poetry, I think you’ll love the conversation I had with poet and poetry lover Mark McGuinness. Writers of all genres will benefit from the things he shared about bringing his love for poetry to life in his podcast, A Mouthful of Air.

Mark and I talk about what it’s like to create something from your passion, to finally have a place for all the enthusiasm he has for poetry.

“This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever created,” he confessed. As an introverted Brit, learning how to read poetry with emotion and his true voice was a challenge. Mark shares the story of how he broke out of his self-consciousness and into his true voice.

Voice is one of the most important elements of writing. Somehow, even though our voice is right there within us all the time, it’s oddly elusive when it comes to expressing ourselves. Mark shares some surprising perspectives on voice that gave me new ways of thinking about voice and how to access it.

Even though Mark is a seasoned podcast host and producer, A Mouthful of Air gave him new challenges. He was able to break away from traditional podcast formats in order to shape an experience he wanted people to have of poetry.

Our conversation was energizing to me and gave me a renewed sense of hope and vitality. I feel emboldened to return to poetry myself, both reading and writing it.

Enjoy this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, getting insight from Mark’s stumbles and how he recovered with grace and commitment.

Find A Mouthful of Air here:

amouthfulofair.fm

Twitter @amouthfulofair

Instagram

Facebook

Linkedin

Mentioned in the episode:

Kristin Linklater Voice Center

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

When you’re a writer, people will often say you have a gift with language. What if we used our words as a gift? I love the idea of being generous with your words. There are a million ways to do this. I suspect you give the gift of your words all the time.

In this solo episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, I share a few thoughts on how to use your words as a gift to others. Plus, a special treat from my client, Christopher Robbins, who generously agreed to give the gift of his words to us here.

Warning: There is explicit language near the end of this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

Christopher Robbins

Annual Review for Creatives workshop

Impulse Writing Club

My new favorite postage stamps

 

Many of us want to help when we hear about others’ challenges, but we don’t know how. Sometimes the problems seem too big. It’s all too easy to tune out and surrender our ability to connect.

Kelly Beck impulsively said yes to a random request that changed her life. She not only went on a cross-country mission to give support to a community, she connected with that community in profound and lasting ways. Kelly’s story is a great model for how to surrender helplessness and step into right action.

She’d done a lot of things including running a successful business, but she’d never done anything like this. In this episode of Stumbling Toward Genius, we hear how she overcame bureaucratic red tape and inner challenges to take consistent action. She’s growing herself and using her gifts to make a direct difference in people’s lives.

Mentioned in this episode:

Almost anything worthwhile is done together. – from Accomplis website.

Accomplis

Lide Haiti

518 Free Store

Jonathan Fields’ Sparketype assessment

Rainn Wilson

Soul Pancake

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.